fiction writing – Page 28 – three good words

August 6, 2014June 16, 2020

34 Willow Drive

34 Willow Drive was a very tidy place, with a neat front garden and perfectly cut grass in the back. You took off your shoes before stepping into the main house, and you took your plate to the kitchen after dinner. Prayers were said before you ate, and on Sundays the whole family dressed up smartly and went to church where there were other families with Sunday clothes on.

In the beginning the other parents were very curious about Caden, and asked Mr and Mrs Corrigan questions, giving Caden pitying looks after those conversations. The children were more forward, asking him if his Dad really almost beat him to death and wanted to see his bruises. The Willow Drive children were fascinated, and Caden was thought to be tough and dangerous since he had survived such violence. Matthew and Stephanie, (who liked to be called Steff, with two fs), liked to brag and show off with him as long as Caden was a novelty. In school they introduced him as a cousin from far away who had a dark past that made everyone curious, but after a few weeks the latest computer game came out and there was Christmas to think of and Caden was like everyone else.

Matthew and Stephanie, who, after the excitement of novelty had worn off, realised that Caden was not a guest, but had actually come to stay, Matt and Steff lost their benevolence and did their best to ignore him. They enjoyed calling him Rice or Riceboy when their parents weren’t listening, simply because Caden liked rice. He’d never eaten it outside the curry shop, and they only went if Aunt Vicky remembered to. When allowed to join in their games, Caden was responsible for all the menial jobs. He was always the servant, the worker, the villain. He enjoyed being the Red Indian most. Others might have thought Matt and Steff’s behaviour mean, but Caden, who had never lived a day in peace at home since Mother left, who never knew how it was to have siblings, who had never had the opportunity of regular meals, clean clothes and a bed that didn’t turn into a trap if someone came home drunk and violent, Caden did not feel the effects of their behaviour until much later. In the beginning he was just content with having another life. He often looked to the sky and wondered if his mother had seen how bad things were and finally found a way to save him. He didn’t know. He went to church and heard about God, but what the Vicar said didn’t really interest him. Caden said the prayers at dinner and made sure to tie his tie correctly before church, (Aunt Vicky had shown him, mumbling there was nothing sillier than a man who couldn’t tie his own shirt, her cigarette hopping up and down while she talked, ashes flying everywhere) but otherwise that part of life at the Corrigan’s remained closed to him. Caden preferred thinking that his mother was on a cloud somewhere, or that the Force actually existed. To Caden at ten, that made much more sense.

Mr and Mrs Corrigan were what people called ‘steady’. They treated Caden as one of their family and never favoured him to their own children, nor their children to him. They worked hard, had strict schedules and did not like being interrupted if they were busy unless it was serious. Every Wednesday, Mrs Corrigan went to her bridge evening and on Thursday nights Mr Corrigan liked to play darts with his friends. He always came home smelling of cigarettes. The Corrigans were not the kind of happy couple you saw on TV, the kind that always laughed and cuddled their kids, living in the big shiny houses. They smiled if you did something well or patted your head. Physical contact, as they called it, was rare in the Corrigans’ house, even between Mr and Mrs Corrigan. They did not hug or cuddle Matt and Steff either, and Caden, who had had too much physical contact for his first ten years, Caden was relieved that no one would be touching him constantly like Aunt Vicky liked to do.

Speaking of Aunt Vicky, she always came at least once a year to see Caden after he moved to the Corrigans’. In the beginning Caden thought it a little tedious to have her come, but in later years he came to enjoy Aunt Vicky’s chaotic visits that always lasted a whole weekend. In his teens he discovered her great talent of making people laugh. She was someone who didn’t expect anything from you except to enjoy yourself and have a good time. She smoked, she drank, she was loud and what Mrs Corrigan called ‘vulgar’, but she was also the kind of person you could ask anything, and Caden took advantage of that when it came to those questions he would never ask the Corrigans. To them, the world was made up of fixed facts of good and bad, order and chaos, enemies and friends, and for a teen like Caden who knew how twisted and out of sync things could be, their answers were always lacking.

At least Aunt Vicky heard you out, maybe asking a few questions in this direction or that. Caden never fully understood them, but at least she asked. And she tended to let him come to his own conclusions. If it was good she smiled and nodded, if she thought it could do with some improvement, she would purse her lips like Mrs Corrigan and continue whatever she was doing. Another thing Caden enjoyed about Aunt Vicky was how she irritated Matt and Steff. They never knew how to take her. She wasn’t fashionable, but she was fun. She wasn’t posh, but she was funny. And she made Caden feel normal again. Having Aunt Vicky come visit always felt like a holiday, a three-day holiday outside his usual life in 34 Willow Drive and by the time Caden passed his GCSEs her visits weren’t something he would have wanted to miss.

August 4, 2014October 6, 2016

Ellen

It was almost ridiculous where they met again. Ellen was shopping at the deli for a dinner she’d promised her friends. She already had everything at home and now was looking for two or three fine cheeses to round off the dinner. She heard a woman’s voice right then, the kind of self-assured voice wealthy women had, and Ellen looked up to observe this particular specimen. The woman was a tall blonde, with perfectly done hair. She was beyond forty by a few years, maybe more, but she’d kept herself wonderfully well. She was stunning even now. Her makeup was perfect, her clothes of the best quality. The jewellery flashing at her ears, around her neck and on her fingers was beautiful, and her handbag was that particular kind where you did not ask for the price. She was beautiful, rich and powerful, it came off her like expensive perfume, and Ellen saw how others glanced at her admiringly and the shop assistants behind the counter stood to attention, smiling brightly.

‘Honey, what do you say? A little Beluga or would Salmon be enough?’ The woman asked this with a confident turn of her head and Ellen at first didn’t see who she was talking to. He was tall and had the kind of dark hair you knew was expertly taken care of. He was in a suit and there was something in the way he moved that made Ellen look again. She expected the man to be older, his hair dyed but his face betraying his real age – she saw a young, strong neck that had to be at least fifteen years younger than the blonde’s, if not more. Then again, you could never tell with these people. She could have been fifty already, but she did look marvellous, her breasts round (possibly with the help of some surgery, Ellen thought a little viciously) and her figure slender and firm. Ellen was sure she went jogging daily or had a personal trainer or something like that. And what was so bad about that, really? She had the means to keep herself very well, so why not use them? And she really did look good. Was it all that surprising then that she was with someone far younger than herself? Men did it all the time, and now women were catching up too, so why not? Ellen decided it was all rather nice in fact.

There was a short discussion between the blonde and her companion, too low for Ellen to hear and she anyway had to choose, the shop assistant was asking if she could help her. Ellen picked out the cheeses she wanted, hearing how the rich woman chose Beluga after all, enough to pay a fortune for it, but then, what was a fortune to Ellen was probably just peanuts for that beautiful woman. The young assistant packed up the cheeses in perfect wraps of brown paper and string, and Ellen couldn’t help think that the rich blonde would have been able to buy a piece of everything, but Ellen wasn’t her. She had a good life too, though. It just wasn’t as richly expensive, as glitteringly affluent as the blonde’s. Then again, wasn’t it nice to see that a woman at her age had such money and power? Everything about her told Ellen that she had worked hard to get where she was now, that she owed nothing to others and all to herself. It was in a way reassuring. The possibility, at least, was there.

Ellen smiled a thank you at the shop assistant and took the parcel of cheeses. Due to the sudden crowding at the counter, Ellen had to walk the other way, past the rich blonde and whoever-it-was with her. She said ‘Excuse me’ and ‘Pardon’ and moved past the people as best as she could, avoiding the stacked wheels of Gouda, the slim glasses of black olives and the exotic olive oils. She passed close by the rich blonde and her partner, and maybe it was curiosity, but Ellen did take a closer look. It was only a glance, a glimpse of his face, just as they too turned to leave. Ellen could not say if he saw her, but she saw him as he turned. By then she was beyond the shelves and walking without thinking. Her heart was racing so fast, she could feel it in her throat. She finally stopped at a shelf full of chutneys and breathed in deeply. Maybe she had seen wrong. Yes, maybe she had seen wrong. It was a reassuring thought. Yes, she had probably seen wrong. It would be ridiculous to meet in a place like this, especially if he was with that blonde. And who would she be anyway? But she had called him Honey. Maybe she was his mother, but Ellen knew that was wrong. The blonde wasn’t that old yet. Fifteen years at best, maybe twenty if she’d kept herself really well.

Ellen shook her head. No, she must have seen wrong. It was probably a trick of the light and it was really only a glimpse. Anyone could look like anything in a second. Yes, exactly. Ellen exhaled once more and went to pay her cheeses and the baguettes, feeling a bit like a mademoiselle. She had to wait in line and couldn’t help it, she looked along the other two queues. They were there. She was in her expensive skirt and jacket combination and he was in that perfect suit. She was talking to him and he was nodding. Ellen recognized the gesture immediately. It was in the shoulders and the turn of his head. It was in the way his hair fell and the angle of his face, showing a profile she could never forget. Just as the blonde turned to pay with her card he turned and their eyes met. Ellen felt everything inside clutch sharply, snatching at her breath. It was him. It was him. It was him. And he knew it was her, she could see it. ‘Miss?’ the young man at the cashier asked. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Ellen said, flustered, blushing. She paid her cheeses and the baguettes. They walked past her just as she was done. He did not look at her. They stepped through the sliding doors and were gone. Ellen saw that her hands were not steady when she took her card. She thanked the young man at the cashier and walked out into the rest of her evening.

It was him, there was no denying it. She had seen. He was not a figment of her imagination as she had come to believe over the past year, ok, seven months. Six and half. Those days had been too perfect, those weeks had been too wonderful to be real. She must have read it or seen it somewhere. It could not have happened. It could not have happened if she woke up alone that Monday and it was as if nothing had ever happened. Ellen had come to believe that, since it made it easier. She could think about it without wanting to cry if she believed it was a dream, a hallucination, a figment of her imagination, a vision in a dream. Where did she read that? Probably a blurb or magazine somewhere. Anyway, that was how she could bear it, by believing that it really never happened, it actually never took place. Now, that was impossible. It was him. She would have recognized that face anywhere.

Ellen arrived home quicker than she expected. She climbed the stairs to her front door and dreaded opening it, but she was in for a surprise. Her friend Tara was waiting with bags of shopping, grinning, ‘I got bored waiting and decided you need some help.’ Ellen smiled gratefully, and pushed back the sudden tears. She would not cry, definitely not now. No, she would not. And anyway, she had seen wrong. If she wanted to enjoy the evening, if she wanted to keep her smile, if she simply wanted to live in peace, she had to believe that. It wasn’t him. It was someone cruelly like him, but it wasn’t him. There was no one like him. He did not exist. And with that, Ellen opened the door to her apartment, stepped back into her life and started preparing the dinner, laughing with Tara who had new outrageous stories to tell, she really was a great friend, she somehow always knew when to turn up in time and make Ellen smile again.

A week later, Ellen came home from work feeling exhausted. The whole week had been draining. She had managed her dinner quite well, what with Tara making her laugh the whole time, and once Anne, Leon and the others joined, everything was great again anyway. But even after they left the memory was there, waiting like a bear-trap under dried leaves, snapping closed the moment Ellen walked into her bedroom. The tears were back, but she refused. She would not. No. She would not cry. She absolutely would not. She refused to. It would not happen. No tear would pearl and slide, she would not reach for any Kleenex, she would simply brush her teeth, change for bed and sleep. And Ellen managed very well until she was in bed, and turned on the TV and found a rom-com on one of the channels, one of those sticky-sweet movies with that young woman who had that face like a sweet young puppy and just got kicked like one by the bastard friend she had, shouting gleefully ‘He’s just not that into you!’ or something like that, really relishing it. Ellen saw the tears slide down the pretty face on-screen and clenched her teeth. She would not. She would not. But she did. Awfully. She cleaned out her whole box of Kleenex, she just couldn’t stop.

Somehow Ellen fell asleep. When she woke up she saw the massacre of Kleenex on her bed and floor. That was the beginning of the end. Saturday was… not good. It was so bad, she called Tara, but Tara was busy with her own life and never took her calls. Sunday turned up, and it got marginally better. Tara came over with coffee, cake and bottles of wine, and watched all kinds of nonsense with Ellen, one rom-com after the other, the worse the better, until they ended up watching Audrey Hepburn movies and singing drunkenly while draining their glasses and pouring out more wine. Tara really was the best friend Ellen had ever had, she always turned up with her emergency kit of sugar, caffeine and alcohol, coffee, cakes and wine, and didn’t care how long it took or what time it was, she stayed until Ellen stopped crying.

Monday showed up without asking and Ellen had a headache, a bad one, but she felt more like herself again. Tara had already gone home by the time her alarm went off. She had taped a post-it to Ellen’s forehead, Tara liked to do things like that. It was hugs and kisses and Need to talk? Call me!, which made Ellen smile a real smile. Tara was the best, she really was. Ellen crawled out of bed, showered, dressed and went to work, lying that she felt a bit chill when someone asked her what was wrong. It was snowing outside so they believed her.

Even so, every day was a trial. By Thursday, Ellen was exhausted all over again. She didn’t want to think anymore. She didn’t want to remember anymore. She was starting to feel that anger she loved, that anger that she had met him, that she had been so foolish to ask, and listen and answer and actually believe it meant something, that she had been stupid enough to talk to him, to give herself away like that as if she had no brain in her head.

Ellen loved that anger, it brought her back into the life she knew, that life that was hers again. By Friday evening Ellen detected the beginnings of normalcy. That anger was growing and soon, very soon, she would spend her hours and days furiously living her own life, with her own thoughts, her own feelings, her own peace of mind. Maybe she would call David and agree to meet him again, her evenings and nights with him were always very nice and he really was a good man. Yes, she would do that. She would go home and ask David if he would like to come over for some pasta, Ellen was very good with pasta, everyone liked her pasta, people even asked her to make it again. Yes, she would call David and ask him if he would like some pasta and wine, she was sure he wouldn’t mind a few hours to relax and unwind.

July 31, 2014October 20, 2014

honeymoon

Not PG rated.

He was the last of the line, and she had the money. That was it really. He was the last of an old line, and she, or rather her father, had the money. She would get the name, her children would be highborn. He would get the money. It was a fair deal as these deals went. Others read novels of dashing young gentlemen fighting rogues for love, but she boarded a train so that he got the money and her father’s grandchildren would be called Sir.

Georgie had little illusions about what was expected of her. There was the ceremony and the toast and the dance. Then they were to take the train to the coast and from there cross over. Her father had already booked and paid everything, they would be travelling for three months. She was told to write and enjoy herself, maybe even take pictures. Nothing would change, save the fact that she was married and respectable, and that half the Continent would fawn over her. After the three months they would return and then she could start cleaning up the manor, putting money into it, getting it back to its old glory. It was all part of the deal, and Georgie knew her part in it.

He didn’t approach her until they were on the boat. They hardly talked on the train, except when he asked her if she was comfortable. She felt, rather than knew, that he disliked this arrangement, that he too felt sold somehow. He was the last of his line, but unlike most of his kind he didn’t look like the runt of the litter. The family had taken care to keep fresh blood coming in, so he was in fact quite decent looking. He was tall, which was nice, she reached him to his chin. His shoulders were broad like a butcher, probably there was a butcher’s boy somewhere in his blood line, you never knew what these families did to make sure the line didn’t go stale. He had dark eyes, black almost, with dark brown hair. His nose was patrician, a clean line, slightly curved but not hooked. He had very nice lips, soft and clearly defined, as if someone had taken them from one of those statues. Otherwise she saw long legs, and a very good taste in suits. He was, for the lack of a better word, a good-looking man, not pretty but attractive. He didn’t look like someone who indulged in silliness, though she could see him dead drunk on scotch and wine. She would wait and see how his habits were once they were back, people were always a bit nicer in foreign countries. Maybe because you had to stick together otherwise you got lost.

He approached her on deck. She was smoking a cigarette, the sea was calm. He stopped next to her, lit his own and exhaled, sliding one hand into his pockets. Georgie waited, but he said nothing. They stayed like that until the bell rang for tea, and he motioned if they should go back in together. Georgie nodded, they went back in. Inside, they sat across each other and she saw him order coffee instead of tea, he wanted none of the cake or sandwiches. She had one sandwich and a cake, she had hardly eaten any luncheon. He started talking then, asking her what she had seen of the country. She answered and that was how they started talking. It was pleasant, every now and then he flashed a smile. He had a nice smile, a little unsettling maybe, Georgie couldn’t say why. They talked well, he lit her cigarette for her, and once they reached port he helped her into her coat and waited for her.

They took the train to the capital and checked in at the George V, taking the suite her father had reserved for them. They went out for dinner, he said he knew a place she might like. It was nice, very French, but the food was delicious and she enjoyed every bit of it. On their drive back however, she began getting fidgety, but did her best not to show it. They were married after all, this was part of the deal. She had to get pregnant at some point, the sooner the better. Her parents half expected her to be showing by the time she returned.

In the suite, Georgie took her time to change. In the bathroom she looked at her reflection, the chestnut hair, the wide, violet eyes. She wasn’t beautiful. She wished she was, but something was off with the symmetry. Her lips weren’t too thin, nor was her nose hooked, but she was plain. Her face was round rather than sleekly thin. She looked like a cherub rather than one of those cat-like creatures. If she had at least something dramatic, something that caught your eye, but all she had in that line were her eyes. They were very pretty. Oh, and her bust. She had large breasts for her frame, and child-bearing hips. She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t beautiful. She had that pleasant look that most men liked since it wouldn’t get others interested. She’d heard that from someone once, a teacher in school. It had hurt then, but now Georgie didn’t fight it. She would never look like one of those beautiful creatures on the silver screen. But her face was pleasant, and she had very good teeth.

Finally, Georgie was in her nightgown and wrapper. She kept herself from smoking another cigarette, downed the glass of whisky she poured herself and went out. He was standing at the open window, holding a tumbler, watching something by the look of it. He turned when she closed the door. He closed the window, crushing the cigarette she hadn’t seen in an ashtray. He drank one last sip from his scotch and put that down as well. He was in pyjamas and a house gown. Georgie didn’t know what to do. She had been told, Annabelle had been very explicit, married as she was herself, and Katie had giggled all through it, Georgie staring at her sisters, mouth shut, eyes wide. Yet, it was going to be done. His family expected an heir as soon as possible, and there was only one way to get one.

They were on the bed, under the sheets. He had already removed his shirt, but he still had his trousers on. He had removed her nightdress. Georgie was completely naked, staring at the ceiling. He had kissed her, but Tommy Chingham had already kissed her behind the shed, so she knew how that was. He was better than Tommy Chingham, at least he didn’t fill her mouth with his tongue and kept his hands to himself. He really had nice lips. He kept on pressing them gently against her cheek and neck and the back of her ear. The second time he started talking, asking, ‘Have you done anything like this before?’ Mystified, Georgie asked, ‘Like what?’ ‘Have you ever been with a man before,’ he asked, and Georgie blushed.

Peter Saunders had touched her breasts and slipped his hand between her thighs, brushing her silkies. He’d gone a bit further at that party, pushing two in, kissing her and doing things that opened something inside her and made him remove his hand in horror. He thought those days had started and only after they were in the light did Georgie realize what poured out of her wasn’t blood, but something else. Somehow worse. Georgie had been so ashamed after that she couldn’t face him again and avoided all the places she could meet him. But that was as far as she knew, so she shook her head. He nodded then, saying ‘I’ll be careful.’ Georgie didn’t know what to make of that and so just waited.

He touched her everywhere. He was kissing her and touching her everywhere, her shoulders and arms, her breasts, both, her sides and middle, her thighs, inside and out, her knees and calves, even her feet. He touched her everywhere and Georgie lay as she was, clutching the sheets. At one point he took her arms and wrapped them around his neck, that was before he moved over her, spread her legs and moved over her, kissing her more. She could feel what was there, Katie said penis to it, but Annabelle, naughty girl, she said cock. It was there, hard and hot, pressed against her, ready to do it. He stopped kissing her and then said ‘Ready?’ and she nodded because it didn’t really matter whether now or later, it would hurt anyway. She felt it first, broader, thicker than anything she expected. She was sure it would never fit and grabbed his shoulders, unable to say it. He said ‘Hold on’ and suddenly he was in and Georgie screamed. She tried not to, but the tears came and she couldn’t stop them. She heard ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘Don’t cry’ but she couldn’t stop it, it just hurt too much. ‘Should I stop?’ he asked and Georgie nodded because she couldn’t bear to feel that again. She couldn’t stop the cry when he removed it, but at least he was gone and Georgie turned away, curled up, so completely in pain there was nothing she could do to stop the tears from falling.

He tried twice more that night, but each time was as bad as the last until he understood that he could do nothing to make it better. Every time he entered her it hurt so much Georgie was in tears. He got up after the last time, got up and poured her a glass, at least she thought so, but he drank a large gulp first, before he filled it up more and brought it to her. She couldn’t sit, but she leaned on her arm and drank, feeling the scotch burn her throat and warm her stomach. She drained almost the whole glass after which the room quickly turned hazy. She didn’t remember much of what happened next, but it soon didn’t matter since she fell asleep anyway.

They were at the sea. The house was beautiful and the staff was taking very good care of them. They had separate bedrooms, which was nice, since that way there wouldn’t be that unspoken thing between them. They were very friendly towards each other during the day, doing their best to be as civil as possible. Anyone watching them, anyone hearing them, anyone seeing them even, would never have guessed what agonies Georgie endured every night for the first two weeks. He tried every other night, or if it was very bad, then he left her to herself for three days. But he always came back, and Georgie prayed that he would finally realize that it would not get better. She tried everything, whisky and a long bath, she even tried those meditations Katie had talked of that were supposed to help, apparently it was supposed to help relax her. She could not pray though, but she did try what she could to calm herself, to relax herself, to just do something so that it wouldn’t hurt so much again, but nothing worked. At night all there was, was pain, and Georgie could see that he was getting impatient. If this continued for three months their marriage would be unpleasant. He was still willing to believe that she could not change it. Georgie didn’t want to think of what would happen if he started believing otherwise.

They were at the sea, and it was beautiful. It was evening, and Georgie was walking down the beach, it wasn’t too dark yet. As always, two things occupied her mind. The day as it was, and the night as it was about to come. The days were always pleasant. Eduard, she had finally come to call him by his name, even in her head, Eduard was a gentleman. He took care of her. He could be a bit rough in the way he treated the staff, but never mean spirited. He just expected them to do their work well. He took her for drives and they visited so many of his friends that Georgie was starting to lose track. They went swimming and sightseeing, they drank coffee in beautiful cafés and ate in wonderful restaurants. The days, the days were wonderful, but the nights… Georgie stopped and looked to the water. How did other women do it? How did they endure it? How by all the heavens did brothels work? And yet there had been that time with Peter Saunders where he pushed his fingers in and they both thought she had her period. That had never happened again and Georgie was starting to wonder if that didn’t have something to do with what she had to endure every other night. She hadn’t allowed another to touch her ever since Peter, too mortified that would happen again. She had read so much in these past two, no three weeks, on her condition, sneaking pamphlets and books into her room and hiding them between her clothes so no one could see them. She read so much that she slowly felt like a psychologist herself. The doctor had said there was nothing physically wrong with her. She was young and healthy and ready to have children. He said it sometimes took time to relax, but it wasn’t as if she was anxious with Eduard. Not during the day at least. At night however… Georgie walked on. How on earth was she to change this? How was she to make it happen?

July 28, 2014February 11, 2015

don’t listen

A blank page can be an awful thing. It seems empty, but it isn’t. It’s filled with possibilities, words written, deleted, rewritten, crossed out, thought over, emphasised, loved, hated, wanted, reviled – and it never ends either.

I think the hardest part is to not listen. You know, those ‘Are you serious’ ‘Are you sure about this?’ ‘Is that good enough?’ and ‘Is that it?’ that whisper from the blankness of the page, sounding out the words in your head. And then it happens, the whispers grow louder and louder, talk, yell, shout and scream and suddenly you’re saying: ‘No no no no no no no no!’ It’s wrong! bad! awful! horrible! blergh!

Delete. Delete. Delete.

And then you’re back to square one, that blank page, that empty space that somehow is already filled with all the things you don’t want to say, all the things you wish to convey, and really need to get on the page. And the whispers just won’t go away.

So many times, too many times, listening has made me do something stupid – that is, I deleted everything in sudden horrified shame, which also meant all the words were gone, never to be retrieved, never to be seen again.

I stopped that.

I keep everything that makes me hesitate, sometimes even squirm, even the silliest scraps of words on paper. I keep them for one reason: between those words, hidden among the letters, there is usually something real, a thought, a word, a memory that I can use later when I know what it is that I’m after. It’s not always like that. Sometimes what I wrote is just really, really bad.

It’s sieving through the whispers and finding my inner compass that’s so difficult. The whispers like to override that gut-feeling that 9 times out of 10 is accurate, and even the tenth time it was right somehow. The whispers that seem to come out of the emptiness, they can get too loud, and the trick is not easy but possible: just don’t listen. Write it down. Write it all down. Even that sentence you know is silly. Even that word you just don’t want to use. Write it down. See it written out so that you know why it’s so horrible. It’s helped me countless times. In a way, when I see it written out, I finally know what’s so wrong with it. Until then it’s just words swirling in my head.

Then I let it rest for a while. Sometimes for a few days, sometimes a few weeks, it can go into months and years actually, but eventually I go back, and read everything one more time. It surprises me time and again how different the words look and sound just becomes some time passed. If I’m happy with it, I edit what needs editing, re-write, re-draft and re-do until it’s roughly where I wanted to be. Then I start over until I finally feel ‘Yeah… that’s about right.’ This takes time of course, and it can be (very) frustrating, but what really helps me is reading the books, poems and short stories I love best. They’re the proof that someone successfully managed to silence the whispers coming out of the (apparent) emptiness.

At one point I had something of a database of crap sentences, horrible plot twists, stupid little dialogues I wanted to turn into genuine conversations and failed, failed, failed. I keep them though, and go back to them when I can overcome the inner cringe, and sometimes – I can’t tell you how or why, there is a mystery to this craft of ours – I find that seed of thought, of feeling that I was aiming for and work from there.

July 28, 2014June 16, 2020

Caden

When the other kids asked Caden Tellis about his past, the first word that came to mind was ‘volatile’ followed closely by ‘violent’, both accompanied by an image: the man they called his father standing over him, red with rage, raising his fist to strike. The pain had long since subsided, but the impact, that crash of knuckle and bone into his body, that stayed. For the first years after he ran away just seeing a fist fight on the school grounds made him feel it again. Caden was known to be quiet, both in his old as well as his new school. Claremont Comprehensive was in the better part of town, up in the hills where the big houses with the two garages were, where there was grass and trees in the backyard and you could ride your bike in the streets without being run over. Until he ran away, Caden had only seen such houses on TV. But then he packed his backpack with crisps, a few bottles of something orange, a jumper, his favourite comic books and the picture of his mother, and slipped out the back while the man they said was his father was snoring in front of the TV.

What exactly triggered the impulse to run away, Caden could no longer say. He remembered thinking that it was his ninth birthday, and that the next year would be his tenth, which meant that he had lived ten years under the same roof with that violent drunk everyone said was his father. Maybe it was that. In any case, he packed his things and left. He had taken up what money he still had left from Aunt Vicky, the money that the man who said had sired him hadn’t taken from him, and with that Caden was able to get on a train and reach the biggest city he knew. He wanted to go to the top of the highest building and see how it was to be a bird. And he did see how it was, it was breathtaking. When he came back down the constable was waiting. He had gone missing for three days and Aunt Vicky had filed a search. While waiting for Aunt Vicky to pick him up a doctor asked him to sit on a bench in a quiet room and he was asked to remove his shirt. Caden still remembered the look on the doctor’s face, it had been calm at first and suddenly turned very serious. He touched the sore spots gently, asking Caden where it hurt, and if he felt any stinging. Caden answered and the doctor asked him to remain very still, he would be right back. An officer was called who looked as serious as the doctor and then the officer brought someone else in who took pictures of Caden and all the sore spots. Once that was done and more questions were asked and answered, Caden watched while the doctor bandaged him. He counted five bandages next to the wide strip around his chest.

Since it would take a day until Aunt Vicky arrived, Caden was taken to the doctor’s sister’s family, a Mrs Corrigan. They lived up in the hills in one of those big houses with the two garages and the large garden in the back. Mrs Corrigan did charity work, which meant she collected money for poor people. Mr Corrigan was an architect. They had two children, Matthew and Stephanie. Matthew was only a few months older than Caden, and Stephanie two years younger than both. They looked at him with wide eyes. Caden felt like an animal in a zoo. He had been once, no twice, with Aunt Vicky. Caden sat uncomfortably on a chair in the parlour, while Dr Martin explained ‘the circumstances’ to his sister. She said she would be glad to help, Caden could stay the night. So Caden stayed with the Corrigans, ate at their oval dinner table, tasting food he had never eaten before, eating with real forks and knives and drinking out of glasses made out of real glass, always aware of Matthew and Stephanie watching him.

Caden didn’t remember much more of that first dinner with the Corrigans. After dinner there was the bath Mrs Corrigan made him take, wincing herself every time she removed the bandages, shaking her head and murmuring, calling to Mr Corrigan (she called him Fred) so he could see ‘what had happened to the poor boy’. To Caden’s embarrassment Matthew and Stephanie came along and saw him half naked on the closed toilet, though they said nothing and Stephanie even gasped. Mr Corrigan moved them out of the bathroom, closed the door and knelt down next to Caden asking him if he was feeling any pain. Caden answered that after Dr Martin gave him two pills the stinging left. Mr and Mrs Corrigan exchanged a look, a look Caden would come to recognize in later years, and then Mr and Mrs Corrigan got to their feet. Mr Corrigan said something to Mrs Corrigan that Caden couldn’t hear. He took a bath then and Mrs Corrigan was nice enough to look away when he was naked, Caden hated it when Aunt Vicky would never leave the bathroom while he was in the tub.

After the bath he was given one of Matthew’s pyjamas and allowed to sleep in the guest-bedroom. The bed was enormous and the mattress heavenly, not to mention the covers and the pillows. Caden had never slept in such a bed. Mrs Corrigan brought him chocolate chip cookies, the American ones, and warm milk, even though he had already brushed his teeth. Then she asked him if he would like her to read a story. Since Mrs Corrigan had been so nice to him, though he was certain she had no stories he would like, he just shrugged which Mrs Corrigan took as a yes. She asked if he knew The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Caden nodded, they’d had one of the teachers read a few chapters to them in school. Did they get to the end? No, the Pevensies were still with the Beavers. So Mrs Corrigan left the room and brought back the book and read on from where Caden’s teacher had left off. He finished his milk and cookies while he listened, Mrs Corrigan could read as good as a teacher. Caden didn’t know when he fell asleep, but he had a very nice dream of sleeping in a cave and waking up at the North Pole where he helped the Christmas Elves pack up the presents, though the presents themselves were odd, enormous toffees, tires the size of houses or a very, very small cavalry and a settlement of Red Indians. They were all alive, and you had to keep them apart otherwise they kept on fighting.

The next day, Caden was brought back to the police and Dr Martin, where Aunt Vicky was already waiting arguing very loudly with a large black woman Caden later found out was Mrs Julian. She worked for The City. She was the one who took care that children in orphanages found parents, or if parents weren’t good parents, then the children got new ones. Caden came to like Mrs Julian, she didn’t make a big fuss about things. That day however, she was shouting with Aunt Vicky, though the shouting stopped the moment Aunt Vicky saw him. She knelt down and spread her arms and Caden, seeing everyone was watching, went and let her hug him, though she still smelled of too much perfume. She asked how he was doing and if he had had a nice stay and said he’d been a very naughty boy for running away like that, which made Mrs Julian huff, ‘From what I see, that boy had all the sense to run away,’ which made Aunt Vicky angry. After some more shouting, Mrs Julian asked Caden to come to her, which he did, Mrs Julian wasn’t someone you wanted to say no to. Mrs Julian lifted his shirt and showed Aunt Vicky the bandaged sore spots. Mrs Corrigan could have been a doctor for the way she dressed the spots after his bath.

Aunt Vicky didn’t really understand until Dr Martin gave her the pictures. She looked very shocked. She started crying. Someone gave her a tissue but it became worse. Mrs Julian looked satisfied. Then Mrs Julian found out that Aunt Vicky was in fact not his aunt but Caden’s mother’s best friend. Since Caden’s mother died she always took care to see after him. She knew Greg, the man who apparently was Caden’s father. She knew he drank too much and had a foul temper but this… ‘If Mary would see this,’ she kept on saying. Mary was Caden’s mother’s name. Then Aunt Vicky asked, ‘Darling, why didn’t you tell me?’ which made Mrs Julian angry again. ‘Tell you? Dear God, are you –’ Caden was sure she wanted to say something rude, but instead Mrs Julian said, ‘In a situation like this children don’t talk. And what should he have told you, Hi Aunt Vicky, Daddy tried to kill me today?’ Caden wondered how Mrs Julian knew. Once he only escaped after kicking him where it really hurt. He ran out into the street and didn’t come back until late at night, but by then the man they said was his father was sitting with someone in front of the TV drinking cans of beer.

Aunt Vicky only cried more. There were more arguments, more shouting, and while Caden waited, sitting on a chair facing the glass window in the door, he saw how Mrs Julian and Aunt Vicky went at each other like bulls, only female bulls, and Mrs Julian was winning. Finally, Mrs Julian came out and Aunt Vicky was sitting on a chair, crying again. There was some more talk Caden didn’t understand except for ‘temporary arrangement’ and that the Corrigans were mentioned as well. The long and short of it was that Caden was brought back to the Corrigans, and what started as a temporary arrangement turned into a final one. By the end of three months’ time, Caden was the Corrigan’s Foster Child. From what Caden heard the man everyone said was his father was arrested and then set free and then arrested again, and this time he had to stay in prison for some time, though not due to Caden. Apparently he had stolen something or hurt somebody, a grown-up this time. Caden didn’t listen carefully, nor did he want to know. It was enough that he would never have to see that man again.